


Red Gravel

by LeeBarnett



Series: Niche Hell [2]
Category: Les Schtroumpfs | The Smurfs, Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Arson, Attempted Suicide, Blood, Building Fire, Cam Boy AU, Crime, Fire, Gore, M/M, Near Death Experience, Polyamory, Suicide, Trauma, Triad - Freeform, Uni AU, University AU, implied character death for the drama of it all but he doesnt actually die, implied death experience, napalm - Freeform, niche hell, severe physical trauma, triad dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 19:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14088342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeeBarnett/pseuds/LeeBarnett
Summary: Bad memories are better burned than buried.





	Red Gravel

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate description, thanks to Papaya: MAYBE THE FACT YOUR BOYFRIEND IS SO INTO FUCKING ARSON SHOULD BE A WARNING SIGN, ORTEGA
> 
> Anyway for those of y'all new to this particular niche corner of ao3, this is an au inside about 10 other aus. The basis you need to know is that this is a uni!AU of Professor Mystery from PnF and human!uni!au Brainy Smurf, where they're cam boys and also dating uni!au Peter the Panda. They all go by their actual names because they're not villains/part of owca yet. 
> 
> Professor Mystery is Miggs Ortega and Brainy Smurf is Quain Petit. (Peter's last name is Orso, but he doesn't really show up in this fic. He's included in the relationship tags bc at this point in this AU's timeline the three of them are dating.) 
> 
> Can you tell I'm real far down in those levels of niche hell yet

Gravel crunches under Miggs’ sneakers as he slowly walks up to the cracked open door of the warehouse. It’s a huge, ugly thing, rusted metal and peeling green paint with grimy windows, surrounded by an overgrown lot half full of abandoned equipment and old, busted product. It’d be a fun place to explore, if Miggs hadn’t realized this morning that Quain’s entire stock of fire-starting supplies had vanished from the dorm. 

The gravel’s been recently disturbed by someone else dragging something through it, and Miggs doesn’t have to be a fantastical, practically mystical tracker in order to know it’s a big black backpack with red straps filled to the brim with napalm and matches. 

The hinges of the door creak when Miggs pulls one hand out of his pocket to push it open, fingertips spread out and eyes pale under the edge of his hood. He glances around, taking in skeletal shelving, a dilapidated counter with a couple broken stools, cupboards hanging open and empty. He can’t see any lights, the interior dark save the one slash of watery moonlight let in by the open door, outlining Miggs’ warped shadow. 

He steps inside and the door slowly groans back to sitting half open behind him. He digs his phone out of his pocket and flicks it open with his thumb, brushing over the screen to turn on the flashlight. He shines it around the pitch black part of the warehouse and discovers more shelving, these ones knocked over, a long time ago going by the amount of grime and settled dust. There’s also something wet glistening over them, and Miggs grimaces, disgusted but wondering why he doesn’t smell the rot if it’s that grimy in here. 

He wanders a little deeper into the warehouse, sweeping his light back and forth in front of himself so he won’t fall into a goddamn pit in the floor or something. The floor’s mostly concrete, but he reaches a point where it’s been spliced off with a bit of metal and turns into patterned tile. He’s pretty sure it was just black and white squares at one point, but now it’s cracked and filthy, barely discernible under the grime, save where a few sets of small footprints track through it. Miggs’ breath catches and he kneels down to inspect them. They’re all fresh; a spur of the moment visit then, unless he takes a different entrance every time. Possible, but he’s seen no other footprints so far. A bad sign, Quain going to burn down a place the first time he visits it. He always likes to use it as a new hideaway for a while, something secret and then something to explore, dragging Miggs along, and then maybe burning it down. 

This feels like something else, something worse, and Miggs can feel every anxious thud of his heart as he discerns the direction of the footprints, accompanied by the same drag trail he’d seen outside. It cuts across the lino and toward the stairs, rickety and rusty metal barely attached to the wall. Miggs stares dubiously up them for a minute, taking in the couple of straight up missing or broken steps, the handrail peeling away, useless and forlorn with its bolts rusted away. He clutches his phone in his right hand and braces the left against the dirty and wet wall as he starts up them, grimacing when they squeal under his weight. He keeps going anyway, mounting the remaining steps slowly, always testing his weight before fully resting it; a fall through them would be unpleasant at best and deadly at worst. He makes it to the top after only one incident of terror, the last step breaking under his weight and leaving him to barely stumble to safety on the second floor. He lays on his face for a minute, breathing fast and hard with adrenaline. He notices the floor up here is just as dirty, though less wet than the wall had been, more of that black and grey lino covered in silt and loose trash. 

Miggs pushes himself to his feet after a brief second of his thudding heart paralyzing him, and looks around. He thinks this may have been the old office space of the warehouse, just a couple doors off a landing where a shattered glass table and a couple overturned, rotting armchairs are. They glisten too when Miggs shines the phone over them, and he frowns, stepping closer to look at what’s covering them. 

The fabric of the chairs is some ugly floral thing that’s been chewed and ripped up by animals for ages, rotting away at the bottom where it’s been wet with rain water and covered in dust. 

It’s also splattered with something wet and dripping, freshly applied with a careless fling. It’s honey-colored and stinks of gasoline and laundry detergent when he gets up close. 

Horror dawns like a flood in his guts, and he brings his hand to his face to find traces of napalm there too, probably from the wall he’d braced on during the climb up the stairs. It could be all over the building, flung by a big spoon in careless arcs, ready to send this place up like a tinderbox. The fear is nearly overwhelming, what is Quain  _ doing? _ Miggs chokes on it and looks around wildly. 

The door closest to him is rotted away and the room inside is dark, and the floor glistens when Miggs throws the light around to be sure it’s empty. Heart in his throat, he darts for the other door, which is intact but crooked in its frame, one set of hinges busted and leaving it sitting lopsided. 

There’s light inside, flickering and faint, the echoes of a struck match burning down between someone’s fingers, the bloom of warmth from a starting fire. 

“Quain!” 

Miggs’ voice cracks like a whip in the air that’s been just the quiet groan of an old building on the edge of the next town over, and he throws his weight into the door to shove it out of the way. It splinters almost in half and he goes sprawling, scrambling to get back up. There’s a startled gasp as he enters, and then a panicked, pained cry, and by the time Miggs has gotten back up and thrown his hood out of his face, the warehouse is no longer dark. 

Flame is rapidly climbing the walls and eating at the ceiling, consuming what was probably once an office or something with a roar. 

Quain’s standing right in the middle of it, his left side on fire. Miggs grabs the zipper of his hoodie and yanks it down, ripping the leather and cotton blend off as he runs for Quain, who is flailing and trying to put out the fire racing up his arm. He shrieks, pained and shocked, and Miggs is nauseated by the smell his brain identifies as  _ bacon  _ rising with the smoke and pressing heat. 

“You idiot, you idiot, you idiot!” Miggs hollers, opening up his jacket and hitting Quain with it, trying to smack out the flames. He hits his hip and thigh first and it snuffs pretty easily, but Quain’s left arm is apparently covered in napalm, because no matter how much Miggs tries to snap it out he keeps  _ burning _ . Miggs is sobbing and choking on the smoke, tears streaming down his cheeks as he tries to put out the flames, Quain howling, clawing at his own head and face with both hands, and Miggs has to shove him to the floor and stand on his right hand to keep him from grabbing at the parts of himself that’s on fire, trying to catch his other arm with the jacket. He gets the upper shoulder and chest and head, coughing and trying not to throw up as he chokes, the smell of burnt leather and hair and flesh mixing with the thick smoke starting to fill the room, and Miggs can feel heat licking at them from all sides, sweat pouring off him and soaking his clothing. 

If he doesn’t get them out now it won’t matter if Quain’s still a little on fire, they’ll both die. Miggs tries one last smothering attempt, throwing the jacket over Quain’s head and side, getting off his other arm as Quain twists and bucks on the floor, sickeningly reminiscent of the throes of orgasm, heels and feet kicking at the floor in agony as he wails. It’s a horrible sound, nothing like the sweet cry of pleasure Miggs is used to getting from him, it’s grating and high, scraping as Quain is forced to vocalize his agony. 

Miggs hauls Quain up into his arms and god he weighs nothing at all, and Miggs’ jacket is on fire now too so he rips it off Quain and throws it aside, leaving it to burn. He nearly trips over the broken door, smoke pouring out of the room as he makes for the stairs. There’s a loud roar behind him, a burst of light, and Miggs can hear Quain sobbing apologies in his arms. Miggs looks down and Quain is a mess of bloody, black and red flesh, left hand curled into a crooked claw against his chest, his hair nearly all gone and the skin on that side of his face burned and torn, the eyelid drooping and leaking blood like rapid tears. Miggs swallows and nearly throws them both down those perilous stairs, stumbling when one cracks and sends him slamming against that wet wall. He leans into it, protecting Quain from the potential of getting more napalm on him. They hit the floor with a hard thud and slide, and Miggs feels a sharp, poking pain in his side.  _ Broken rib _ , an old memory tells him, the heat that blooms after it tasting like chemicals in the back of his throat. 

The warehouse is nothing but  _ noise  _ now, Miggs’ head spinning as he tries to get them up, the roar of the second floor being engulfed in flame and quickly starting to collapse. A portion to their left falls with a rush and thundering noise that feels almost like an earthquake. 

Miggs scrambles to his feet and drags Quain up with him, gasping when the pain in his side gets worse, like leaning into a nearly healed injury and rebreaking it. He ignores it, throwing Quain over his left shoulder and holding his thighs to Miggs’ chest with one arm, the opposite hand going to hold his injured side. He staggers when the stairs screech and collapse behind them, rattling the floor as Miggs tries to make a run for the door. He remembers the relatively straight path, but nearly collides with that dilapidated counter. He can see the open door, the second floor of the building crumbling above them, flame rushing along that splatter napalm. 

Miggs gets them through the door, feels a burst of the cold night air on his skin, a moment’s relief—

And then the building behind them collapses. 

It comes down like the end of the world, loud and hot and everywhere, and Miggs can’t get enough purchase on the gravel to get out of the way. What feels like the entire front wall of the building slams into him and knocks him down. He flings himself forward to land over Quain as they’re sent sprawling, and Miggs braces his arms and legs above Quain’s small, curled form trying to keep anything from hitting him. 

Something huge and hot and heavy lands one Miggs, and the world goes white and silent for a minute. 

The first thing he notices is that everything below his waist is just gone. It goes numb, limp and collapsing underneath him like cut puppet strings. The next is agony racing up his back and into his shoulders and head and arms. He screams and it’s so raw and horrible that his voice cracks after just a couple seconds of it and it just turns into a whistling exhale until his throat is straining and his features are taut and bulging from how hard he’s trying to scream but just  _ can’t _ . He chokes, he sucks in a breath, that bacon smell is back and this time it does make him throw up. 

It’s a burning, acidic mouthful of bile he spits into the gravel above Quain’s head, and he’s shaking so hard he can’t support his own weight, collapsing on top of Quain’s limp form. Miggs can feel him stir slightly, still conscious or just regaining it, a shockingly soft movement to notice when he can feel the skin of his middle back sizzling. There’s something wet, heavier than sweat, soaking into Miggs’ clothes, and the coppery tang on his tongue tells him it’s blood, a lot of blood, a very very scary amount of blood pooling out of him, dripping down onto Quain and soaking into the gravel beneath them. Miggs can’t tell if the ringing in his ears is actually sirens or not and oh God he feels really dizzy and weak, the edges of his vision getting dark and fuck is he really going to  _ die  _ now? 

He feels the ragged, weak drags of Quain sobbing underneath him, and Miggs is crying just as hard now that he’s done screaming, and he tries to gently cup Quain’s head with his dirty, bloody hands, trying not to touch any of his burns. 

“L…loove…you,” Miggs manages to choke, warped and thick through tears, unsure if Quain can even hear him over the collapsed wreck burning around them and that scream of sirens getting close. “Mi am-amor—cito, love you, s-so…much—” He can taste blood, his throat feels thick, breathing is getting hard, wet and bubbling when he drags it in, God, oh  _ God _ . He coughs, chokes, a splatter of crimson over what’s left of Brainy’s hair and his unburnt cheek and the gravel next to his head. There’s a loud rushing noise in Miggs’ ears, and he can’t tell if it’s the fire but when he tries to lift his head to look around everything spins and goes dark. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading ;0 comments are love, comments are life
> 
> if you noticed any mistakes/typos, lmk so i can fix them ;3c 
> 
> come find me /leedoobles on tumblr i draw stuff sometimes <:3c


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